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In a diplomatic negotiation, you always meet the same the other side all the time. Even if you should succeed in outsmarting him or in pressuring him, it only sets up a cycle in which he will try to get even.

Henry A. Kissinger

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Henry A. Kissinger
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More quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

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One theory is that we will make war look so attractive that we undermine the deterrent. That's Never Never Land. What we have now would have been enough to deter Hitler. But we are talking in a different order of reality.
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A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.
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He [Deng Xiaoping] said that he did not understand why we failed to grasp that the alternative was not democracy, but total chaos and risking all the reforms that had been achieved.
Henry A. Kissinger
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In my particular case foreign policy happens to be my hobby, my consuming interest. I had spent decades studying it.
Henry A. Kissinger
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This country cannot afford to tear itself apart on a partisan basis on issues so vital to our national security.
Henry A. Kissinger
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It is not often that nations learn from the past even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it. For the lessons of historical experience, as of personal experience, are contingent. They teach the consequences of certain actions, but they cannot force a recognition of comparable situations.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The reason prophets are so rarely honored in their own country is that their role is to transcend the limits of their contemporaries' experience and imagination. They achieve recognition only when their vision has been turned into experience - in short, when it is too late to benefit from their foresight.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side's outpost against the other - it should function as a bridge between them.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The emergence of a unified Europe is one of the most revolutionary events of our time.
Henry A. Kissinger
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For the Soul of France is masterful history, brilliantly researched, and hard to put down.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins. Foreign policy is the art of establishing priorities. Demonization is not a policy it is an alibi for the absence of one. The test is not absolute satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
Henry A. Kissinger
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With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The members of the Islamic Staye have cut the throat of an American on television. This is an insult to the United States, which requires that we demonstrate that this is not an act that is free. I would strongly favor a strong attack on ISIS for a period that is related to the murder of the American.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Obama is like a chess player who is playing simultaneous chess and has opened his game with an unusual opening.
Henry A. Kissinger
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People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.
Henry A. Kissinger
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The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
Henry A. Kissinger
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I was always convinced that decent people in the case of Vietnam, highly intelligent, decent people, got us involved because they had made, in part, a misjudgment about the nature of the communist system and the unity of the communist world and the degree to which the experience of Europe could be repeated in Vietnam.
Henry A. Kissinger
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Certainly not a party of the workers and the peasants. In fact, Jiang Zemin in recent weeks has officially said that capitalists and the entrepreneurs should be enrolled in the Communist Party.
Henry A. Kissinger